The Water We Swim In: Why Being Seen Matters More Than You Think

In David Foster Wallace’s thought-provoking parable, two young fish are swimming along when an older fish passes by and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish keep swimming. After a while, one turns to the other and asks, “What the hell is water?”

The point of the parable is simple but profound: It’s easy to overlook the elements that hold our world together, because they’re woven into our routines, our language, our expectations of others and ourselves.

As a clinical psychologist and attachment researcher, I study the often-overlooked reality of how the acknowledgment we receive from caregivers in times of distress shapes our lifelong vulnerability—or resilience—to suffering.

This is the water we swim in.

The invisible frameworks of our relationships guide us more than we realize.

Source: Image created by author

My Water

When I was about nine years old, I was playing backgammon with my best friend — one of those games where luck plays as big a role as skill. I rolled double sixes—which meant I was about to win the game—and started jumping up and down with joy. But my friend insisted it was a six and a five. That one-point difference would have cost me the game.

We argued back and forth. I got frustrated and told him to leave. I couldn’t contend with the fact that my best friend didn’t believe me—didn’t acknowledge what I was certain I had seen.

I sat alone in my room, fuming, hurt, and frustrated. Then my father came in. He didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t ask what I felt. He just said, “If you keep sending your friends away like this, you’ll end up with no friends at all.” Then he walked out.

It wasn’t a traumatic moment. It was, in fact, almost banal. And that’s the point: We are shaped not only by life’s big ruptures, but by the quiet, ordinary moments—repeated again and again—when our struggles go unseen.

Some wounds are subtle. But when they are reopened consistently, especially by those closest to us, they come to define the emotional water we live in. My reality went unacknowledged by the person I needed most, and my sensitivity to not being seen only deepened with time.

I know now that my father wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was carrying his own water—shaped by his life, his parents, his time—and doing the best he could with what he had. But as a child, why would I care? What I felt most was the gap between what I experienced and what went unacknowledged.

Those quiet wounds became my water.

The first question in life is to our caregivers: Will you acknowledge me?

Source: Leah Flores/Stocksy United

Where It All Begins: The Infant’s First Relationships

Attachment theory, introduced by John Bowlby and expanded by Mary Ainsworth and others, teaches us that infants don’t just seek food or physical comfort; they seek emotional connection. From an evolutionary perspective, behaviors such as crying or reaching are adaptive strategies: They signal the need to be acknowledged and responded to by caregivers. Without that acknowledgment, an infant’s most vital needs go unmet—and across evolutionary history, children whose caregivers failed to recognize and respond to their distress were far less likely to survive.

Consider one of the very first behaviors healthy newborns exhibit: crying. A baby’s cry is not just a reflex but a demand for acknowledgment — I’m here. I’m cold. I’m hungry. I need you. I cannot survive alone. Can you respond, immediately and effectively?

When these signals are consistently met with warmth and attunement, the child begins to form a set of expectations that someone is available, attentive, and able to soothe them in times of need. These expectations form the foundation of what attachment theory describes as a secure attachment relationship.

And in this case, more is truly better. Our research has shown that children who develop secure attachment relationships with multiple caregivers—that is, relationships in which they come to expect acknowledgment and responsiveness in times of need—tend to show fewer behavioral problems, stronger language skills, and better social functioning.

Why We Keep Swimming in the Same Water: Memory Scripts

What’s fascinating is how these early experiences shape not just behavior, but also memory.

To make sense of the world and conserve the limited brainpower we have, our brains create shortcuts called scripts—mental templates formed through repeated experiences. These scripts help us predict what will happen in familiar situations in the future.

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The same goes for emotional life. When a child is consistently acknowledged by their caregivers—noticed, understood, and soothed during times of need— they develop a secure base script that looks something like this: “At times of distress, I believe an available parent will be there to acknowledge my pain, and effectively sooth me.” This becomes a generalized expectation carried into adulthood, and shapes how we think, behave, and feel under distress.

When acknowledgment of their emotional needs is absent or inconsistent, children are more likely to develop scripts that lack the expected sequence of events in which those needs are recognized and met. As adults, they become more vulnerable to depression and often experience less satisfying romantic relationships, since they don’t expect effective care from those closest to them. They are also more likely to parent their own children with reduced sensitivity, relying on the same scripts that once guided their own behavior.

Can We Be Seen Again?

If you ask the average layperson how therapy “works,” many would likely describe it as a process in which one brings a life problem to the therapist, who then offers a way to fix it. From an attachment theory perspective, however, therapy rarely works this way. Suffering does not arise directly from life’s problems, but from a low quality, or absence of a secure base script.

Anxiety? It is not worry about negative future events as much as it is our accompanying expectation that others will not be available or effective in their soothing at times of need. Depression? It is not what is lost and cannot be restored as much as it is about a belief that efforts to seek help or closeness with others are futile.

To the degree that we can develop a belief in being acknowledged during times of emotional distress—and masterful therapists cultivate this belief through consistent, attuned presence —therapy can help those of us who grew up lacking acknowledgment to feel seen.

So What the Hell Is Water?

Water is the emotional climate we adapt to early in life—the current of acknowledgment (or its absence) that shapes how lonely we feel when life’s problems surface.

Through repeated caregiving experiences, we build memory scripts that guide our emotional lives—scripts that determine whether we reach out, how we cope, how we parent, and whether we believe we can truly be seen.

That backgammon game has stayed with me because it distilled the essence of my water growing up. Therapy didn’t erase that past, but it let me see it for what it was: not a flaw in me, nor in life itself, but a reflection of the water I had once learned to swim in.

And sometimes, that’s enough to begin swimming elsewhere.